Syrian toddler's dad: 'Everything I was dreaming of is gone' – CNN

Story highlights
Father of Syrian toddler who drowned describes the horror as the boat sank, tells CNN he has nothing to live for
The child was one of 12 people who drowned off Turkey
A haunting image of him has been shared with the tag “Flotsam of Humanity”

They wanted what anyone does — what hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violence, who have flooded Europe, want — a safe home.
Trying to make that simple but treacherous dream a reality, Aylan, his brother and mother drowned. An image of the boy’s body on a Turkish beach shook social media and outraged leaders in Canada, where the family had hoped to wind up, and many others watching the European migrant crisis unfold.
On Thursday, four Syrian citizens were taken into custody, suspected of human trafficking in connection with their deaths and those of nine others whose bodies washed ashore, according to Turkey’s semiofficial Anadolu news agency.
Abdullah, the only Kurdi family member to survive the trip, says he has nothing left to live for.
“I don’t want anything else from this world,” he told CNN on Thursday. “Everything I was dreaming of is gone. I want to bury my children and sit beside them until I die.”

Trying to get to Canada
Canadian Member of Parliament Fin Donnelly told CNN partner CTV that Abdullah’s sister Tima Kurdi, who lives in Vancouver, had filed refugee paperwork to obtain permission for the family to live in Canada, but the application had been rejected in June.
But Tima Kurdi, in a later interview Thursday with CTV, said she had actually filed paperwork for her other brother, Mohammed, and that was rejected.
She said she was hoping to personally put up the money to sponsor Mohammed and his four children to come to Canada. They are now in Germany.
Meanwhile, she had been sending money to Abdullah. She presumes that Abdullah used those funds to try to get his family to Canada. Tima knew of his plans to take the dangerous voyage, she said, and she recalled a phone call with Abdullah’s wife in which Rehen said she was afraid to travel by water.
I’m so scared of the water,” Tima recalled her sister-in-law saying. “I don’t know how to swim.”
The world learned of Aylan’s death when a photo of the drowned boy was shared widely on social media, many using the hashtag #Kı …Read More